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Monday, August 13, 2012

Mid-term Check-Up #2: Can Caterham Deliver? & where are Toro Rosso?

I'm falling in love with Caterham, mainly due to the fact that I really think they are the only team trying to break out of the Zero points brigade but I'm very worried that they can't achieve this ambition. Since Valencia I've been waiting and expecting the team to outqualify and outrace the Toro Rosso's however it would seem that, under pressure, the baby Red Bulls have managed to pull their collective fingers out and have upped the ante in a manner which has negated all of the gains Caterham achieved with their upgrades in Valencia and Silverstone.

Below is a table of the Respective Qualifying and racing performances of both the Caterham and the Toro Rosso drivers. Black text means they beat their teammate, white obviously means they failed to do so.

Kovalainen

Qual Race

Petrov

Qual Race

Ricciardo

Qual Race

Vergne

Qual Race

Australia

18

Ret

19

Ret

10

9

11

11

Malaysia

24

18

19

16

15

12

18

8

China

18

23

19

18

17

17

24

16

Bahrain

16

17

18

16

6

15

17

14

Spain

19

16

18

17

15

13

14

12

Monaco

17

13

18

Ret

15

Ret

16

12

Canada

17

18

18

19

14

14

19

15

Europe

16

14

20

13

17

11

18

Ret

Britain

19

17

18

DNS

12

13

23

14

Germany

16

19

18

16

11

13

15

14

Hungary

19

17

20

19

18

15

16

16

Kovalainen has outqualified Petrov 8-3 but has only beaten him in the races 5 times out of 11 races; Ricciardo has outqualified Vergne9-2 and leads 7-5 in race results.

I've put together the following table which allows us to extrapolate the drivers position within their respective teams. I've negated any disadvantage arising from Accidents, failure to start, pitlane screw-ups, penalties and even driver errors and simply dealt with the pure data as per qualifying and race pace:

Qualifying stats + Race Improvement over Race start position

Adjusted to take account of penalties, accidents, Driver
Errors, Pit screw-ups, and DNFs

Kovalainen

Qual Race

Petrov

Qual Race

Ricciardo

Qual Race

Vergne

Qual Race

Australia

-8

DNF

-9

DNF

0

+1

-1

0

Malaysia

-4

+6

-5

+3

0

+3

-3

+10

China

-2

PIT

-3

+1

0

0

-1

+8

Bahrain

-10

PUNC

-12

+1

0

ACC

-11

+3

Spain

-4

+3

-3

+1

-1

+2

0

+2

Monaco

-2

+4

-3

ELEC

0

DErr

-1

+4

Canada

-3

-1

-4

-1

0

Dthru

-5

+4

Europe

0

+2 ACC

-4

+7

-1

+6

-2

ACC

Britain

-8

+2

-7

DNS

0

-1

-1

+9

Germany

-5

-3

-7

+2

0

-2

-4

+1 Punc

Hungary

-3

+2

-4

+1

-2

+3

0

0

Breaking down the stats; the table shows that RIC leads Qualifying with a score of -0.36, VER is behind with -2.63 followed by KOV on -4.45 and PET last on -5.54.

On Sunday VER leads, improving his position by an average of 4.1 places in races completed, RIC comes in second well behind on 1.714 and KOV and PET are tied on 1.875.

For the purpose therefore of reviewing the racers it is clear that VER leads RIC over a GP weekend by the smallest of margins 0.116 calculated as follows 1.47 (4.1-2.63) - 1.354 (-0.36 + 1.714). KOV leads PET by 1.09, purely as a result of Qualifying, (-)2.575 - (-)3.665.

The team averages tell an interesting story:
Caterham's average Qualifying position is 18th place on the grid
Toro Rosso's has been between 15th and 14th but closer to 15th.
Race finish position on average for the Cats has been between 16th and 17th, closer to 17th
For the TR's tha average race finish position is 13th, four places above the Cats.

How close are the Cats to the Bulls at this point? having studied the fastest qualifying times of both teams over the course of the last 11 races it is clear that wild variations exist in the results, therefore to the purpose of accuracy I took away the two greatest and the two smallest gaps and have calculated that, prior to Valencia the average gap was of the order of 1.532 seconds a lap in favour (of course) to the Bulls. The gap since Valencia is of the order of 1.354 seconds.

Of course, if you add the fringe times, the exercise becomes a bit of a Caterham PR stunt showing the gap pre-Valencia at 1.767seconds coming down to 1.031 seconds over the last four races (a PR gain of nearly three quarters of a second rather than the more realistic gain of 0.178 seconds).

Statistics can tell you anything you want to hear but in this case I think that Caterham will find it difficult to catch the TR's as any gains that they have made with the upgrades from Valencia and Silverstone have been minuscule and must have been counteracted by upgrades to the Toro Rosso car.